— PROJECT NAME
Padsers
— ROLE
Producer
Game Designer
— RELEASE DATE
June 2018
- — SUMMARY
"Female toad Padricia enjoys a beautiful spring day when she is harassed by the male toad Padro. He feels entitled to mate with her, something she's not into. Defending herself, the two engage in a sumo wrestling match atop a lily pad where hot-headed Padro learns the hard way that this lady ain't no pushover."
Padsers is a 3d first-person fighting game played using a custom 1x1 meter large Commodore 64 controller. Using shoves, sidesteps and parries players must outspeed and outsmart Padro the toad to push him off of the arena 3 times, Padro growing angrier and stronger with each passing round.
The game was developed for Hilversum Plays, an outdoor gaming event in the summer of 2018, in collaboration with Dropstuff.nl and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Visuals. The game was well received during its showing in June allowing it be part of the NISV's Dutch Games Canon exhibition from August through November 2018.
- — TASKS
Maintained contact with our client company, prepared and held presentations for feedback and set up playtest sessions using their hardware.
Designed the game through its conceptual stage, core gameplay, level design, writing and balancing.
Managed the team's deadlines and tasks working on multiple unreleased prototypes simultaneously.
Designing Padsers
Padsers was intended to be played outdoors by passing public, thus needing to be easy to pick up and understand. To facilitate this I’ve designed the game around the easy to grasp concept of staying inside the ring while trying to get Padro out. To encourage players to play I’ve tried to have all of the player’s moves be of great impact to the game state.
- ○ The Slap move is a very simple and quick attack, pushing Padro back.
- ○ The Side Step moves the player left or right, allowing them to gain a positional advantage while dodging Padro’s attacks.
- ○ The Parry braces Padricia for a short time. If Padro attacks the player during this timeframe, Padro is stunned, giving a high-risk high-reward option to either claw your way back into the game or give Padro that final push off the edge.
Balancing
Designing Padsers I did the balancing for Padro's and Padricia's moves. Difficulty gradually increases as the first round can be won using only the Slap move while later rounds require the player's full moveset to overcome Padro. The final round forces the player to defeat Padro's mighty Super Shove to achieve ultimate victory.
View the full Google Sheet.
Intro Cutscene
Collaborating with the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Visuals we've constructed an introductory cutscene using their open media platform openbeelden.nl. I've worked on the storyboarding, writing and gathering of video material for the cutscene. Editing was performed by Geert Beuneker.